TMUX and the system clipboard

Posted on Sunday, August 14, 2022 by TheBlackzone

When I started using TMUX years ago, I frequently updated it from its Github repository, always eager to learn about the latest features of each new version. But, having become the lazy slacker I am nowadays and also having become quite comfortable with my current tmux setup, I haven’t done so for ages.

Today however, I finally did an upgrade to the latest git version and took the opportunity to fix my TMUX configuration regarding a (mildly annoying) shortcoming of not being able to copy mouse selection directly to the system clipboard.

I normaly use the keyboard to copy and paste from or to tmux (CTRL-B being my tmux prefix key):

• CTRL-B + [ - to enter copy mode
• v - to start a selection (or V to start line selection), using the VI h,j,k and l keys to move around
• y - to yank the selected text to the system clipboard
• CTRL-B + p - to paste

This behaviour is achieved by these configuraton options:

# Use vi keys for navigation set-window-option -g mode-keys vi # begin selection bind -T copy-mode-vi v send-keys -X begin-selection # copy to global clipboard bind -T copy-mode-vi y send-keys -X copy-pipe-and-cancel "xclip -i -f -selection prima # paste from global clipboard bind p run "tmux set-buffer \"$(xclip -o)\"; tmux paste-buffer" 

One thing that had never worked for me however was, to copy an area of text from tmux directly to the system clipboard by using the mouse.

To be honest, this had not bothered me enough to put a lot of energy in finding a solution for it, because in my terminal of choice (xfce4-terminal) it is easily possible to just hold down the shift key when doing mouse selections and then shift-right-click to use the terminal’s native copy-paste functionality.

Nevertheless, with the new version of TMUX I finally found an easy solution by adding these settings to my configuration file:

set-option -g mouse on bind -T copy-mode-vi MouseDragEnd1Pane send-keys -X copy-pipe-and-cancel "xclip -i -f -selection primary | xclip -i -selection clipboard >/dev/null" 

It’s the same command as for copying by keyboard, except the keycode being ‘‘MouseDragEnd1Pane’’.

I actually don’t know for how long this solution has been around, but I’m glad I finally learned about it. My TMUX experience now seems to be complete :-)

And, since everybody seems to enjoy looking at other’s configuration settings, here’s my complete ‘’.tmux.conf’’ file:

# TERM set -g default-terminal "screen-256color" # Statusbar set-option -g status on set-option -g status-bg colour235 set-option -g status-fg colour244 set-option -g status-interval 2 set -g status-right '#[fg=green]#[bg=green]#[fg=black]  #(hostname)  %Y-%m-%d %H:%M #[fg=colour17]#[bg=colour17]#[fg=colour39] #(whoami) #[default]' # Highlight active window set-window-option -g window-status-current-style fg=white set-window-option -g window-status-current-style bg=colour235 set-option -g pane-border-style bg=colour235 set-option -g pane-border-style fg=yellow set-option -g pane-active-border-style fg=colour244 # key bindings set-window-option -g mode-keys vi bind h select-pane -L bind j select-pane -D bind k select-pane -U bind l select-pane -R bind r source-file ~/.tmux.conf \; display-message "Config reloaded..." bind v split-window -h bind b split-window -v bind-key C-b last-window bind C-v paste-buffer # begin selection bind -T copy-mode-vi v send-keys -X begin-selection # copy to global clipboard bind -T copy-mode-vi y send-keys -X copy-pipe-and-cancel "xclip -i -f -selection primary | xclip -i -selection clipboard >/dev/null" # paste from global clipboard bind p run "tmux set-buffer \"$(xclip -o)\"; tmux paste-buffer" # options set-window-option -g clock-mode-colour colour33 set-window-option -g aggressive-resize on # faster key repeat set -s escape-time 0 # Activity monitoring set-window-option -g monitor-activity on set -g visual-activity on # mouse support set-option -g mouse on bind -T copy-mode-vi MouseDragEnd1Pane send-keys -X copy-pipe-and-cancel "xclip -i -f -selection primary | xclip -i -selection clipboard >/dev/null" # scrollback set -g history-limit 128000 # tab numbering starts at 1 set -g base-index 1 # F1 bound to quickly create a multi pane layout for my development work bind F1 split-window -v -l 8 \; split-window -h -p 50 \; split-window -h -p 50 \; select-pane -t 0 \; split-window -h -p 50 

You may have noticed those “special characters” in the status bar setup. These are actually some modified unicode characters coming from the font I use for my terminal, “LiterationMono Nerd Font”, which can be found here.

Tags: linux